


oh, baby, I’m just human

by starraya



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, I’m enjoying my best canon-free life and it is SPLENDID, Killing Eve AU, Most of the dialogue taken from S1 Ep8, but this idea wouldn’t leave me, i’ve stopped watching Holby bc I no longer care for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 22:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16880046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starraya/pseuds/starraya
Summary: Bernie breaks into Serena Campbell’s apartment in France and smashes every bottle of shiraz she can find.“Sorry baby,” she whispers.Killing Eve AU.





	oh, baby, I’m just human

**Author's Note:**

> The song that Serena plays in this story is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by Nina Simone. So, if you want to get into the mood, I’d suggest a listen.

 She leaves the army, a job she loves, a job she sacrificed everything for, even gave up children for (as Marcus put it, but she’d never felt it as a loss), to save her marriage. She knows why. She’s a coward. Blown up by an IED in Afghanistan and facing paralysis at worst, weeks and weeks of physio at best, who wouldn’t cling on to a worry-stricken, supportive husband who loved you, who didn’t know that you didn’t love him? When Alex drunkenly hollers at their door and spills the secret of their affair, Bernie walks her to the next street, calls her a taxi and calms her down with a kiss, before returning to find the house empty and Marcus gone for a two week stay in the Scottish Highlands with his parents.

She enjoys the quiet, the absence of him, spends a luxurious week piling up mugs in the kitchen sink, scattering takeaway noodle cartoons over the coffee table and wearing creased shirts, with no one to chide her about cleanliness or make a point of setting up the iron. She spends a luxurious week parading around the house in little more than a creased shirt, going for runs outside in the bracing, winter air, for as long as she likes, whenever she likes, until she is red and sweaty, and then showering and giving herself orgasms she doesn’t have to fake.

But she misses the army, the camaraderie, the thrill, the sense of purpose. She was good at her job, excellent, actually. One of the best trauma surgeons in the world. Civilian life chafes her. Her locum work at a local hospital is red tape, paperwork, boredom, paperwork, maybe a patient with a hip replacement, more red tape, and of course, her boss is a dinosaur, a stickler for the rules and his favourite catchphrase is “Ms Wolfe, we do things differently here.”

She receives an email, asking for the talents of an ex-army woman such as herself, and within a week she’s recruited by the intelligence service. Marcus returns, but she leaves him, for a flat paid for by her employers, the ones at the very top, the ones she’s never met. They give her a generous salary too, and a task: to track down a serial killer, who’s killing more and more people every day, and frankly starting to show off. She’s female, that’s about all they know.

-

She breaks into Serena Campbell’s apartment in France and screams out her frustration. She has followed this woman to Germany, to Russia and even shared dinner with her after she broke into Bernie’s flat. She vowed to kill her after Germany, after Dominic Copeland’s funeral, after Serena murdered him. She chooses, it seems, who gets to follow her, and hunt her down, who gets to study her kills. She chooses Bernie.

Bernie hates how it thrills her, that they have this connection, that if anyone was going to put a stop to Serena, it would be Bernie. Serena repulses her. Drives her crazy. Serena fascinates her. Impresses her with every kill. 

How she plans it. How she executes it. How she gets away with it.

Everyone ignores a woman over forty, but Serena Campbell is all Bernie can think about day and night. She wonders what happened to her, before all this, before the killings.

Before she ruined Bernie’s life.

Bernie opens Serena’s fridge, empty except for rows of shiraz bottles. Rare, vintage, she guesses, before taking out one and opening it with a corkscew that has jewel set in it. Surely, it can’t be a diamond? Bernie brings the wine to her lips, carelessly lets it gush. Some of she drinks, most of it soaks into her white shirt, stains her skin.

She smashes the bottle on the ground. Gets another, smashes another. Gets another. She smashes every single bottle she finds. 

The floor glitters with glass.

”Sorry baby,” she whispers.

She goes to Serena’s bedroom and pushes all the bottles and tubs on Serena’s dressing table to the floor. They crash, shatter. Sweet, sickly perfume floods the room. 

Bernie goes to another room and opens Serena’s wardrobe and tears Serena’s clothes from their hangers. She wishes she had scissors to shred them. They’re all designer, she knows, worth thousands upon thousands, but Bernie doesn’t know a jot about designer clothes. 

Bernie opens drawer after drawer, scooping out their contents and hurling them everywhere and anywhere, but pauses when she finds a drawer full of every knife and gun imaginable.  

Serena’s favourite drawer, no doubt.

Bernie remembers a packet of cigarette she swept off the dressing table, Treasurer Aluminium Gold. She could murder for one. She walks back to the bedroom and picks the packet from the floor, pops a cigarette in her mouth, before realising she hasn’t got a lighter. 

“I think you’re meant to light it.”

Bernie jumps at Serena’s voice, drops the cigarette and nearly drops the gun. Hands trembling, she aims it at Serena.

Serena simply smiles. She regards the broken glass, Bernie’s shirt stained red, the patches of Shiraz in her hands and chin. “Did you have a party without me? _With_ shiraz?”

“I have lost two jobs, a husband and a best friend because of you.”

“You didn’t want the husband anyway and you’ve got some very nice clothes out of it all.” Serena eyes flick between the shirt she brought Bernie and the gun. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“No.” Serena’s smile widens. “You’re not.”

Her hands tighten around the gun. “Yes, I am.”

“You’re not. Why would an artist kill their muse?”

“I’m not . . . you’re not my –” Even before Bernie lowers the gun, Serena turns her back to her, puts down the motorcycle helmet that was at her hip and pulls off a long, blonde wig. She tosses it on the floor. “Traffic was murder, darling,” she groans, combing her fingers through her short, messy silver hair.

Bernie hovers, wordless, unsure, as Serena strips her motorcycle leathers off without a shred of self-consciousness, until she’s left in black silk underwear. For some reason, she excepted nothing but red, since black seemed such an ordinary, dull colour. Except it isn’t on her, set against the tan of her arms and neck, the pale, soft white of her belly, the black glitters. Her body, muscular, strong, thick, reminds her of a portrait she once saw in a gallery Marcus dragged her to when they were dating. It was the only portrait that interested her, that drew her in, that questioned her. It was of a female warrior, an Amazon perhaps or Athena, bathing in a lake, battle-scarred but triumphant.

Serena opens a drawer, leisurely picks out a black negligee – as if she has all the time in the world – and slips it on. She offers Bernie another packet of cigarettes.

“It’ll calm you down,” she advises.

Bernie raises the gun again. This isn’t how it’s meant to go, God damn it. An amused Serena offering her cigarettes and Bernie burning with everything she wants to say, everything Serena must listen to.

Bernie swallows, steels herself. “I’m going to tell you something. Sit down.” Eyes sparkling with curiosity, Serena sits down on a pouffe. Bernie slumps down opposite her, on the edge of Serena’s bed and throws the gun to her side. Serena wants to ask Bernie what she thinks of the sheets, they are her favourite, soft, smooth, sinfully expensive, but she bites her lip, keeps quiet, waits for Bernie.

Bernie stretches, sighs. “I think about you all the time. I think about what you’re wearing and what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. I think about what friends you have, I think about what you eat before you work and what shampoo you use and what happened in your family. I think about your eyes and your mouth and what you feel when you kill someone. I think about what you have fore breakfast. I just . . . want to know everything.”

“I think about you too.” Serena leans forward, rests one elbow on her knee, rests her chin in her hand. “I mean, I masturbate about you a lot.”

“Okay, that –”

“Too much?”

“I just wasn’t expecting that.”

Serena pouts, puzzled. She taps her fingers about her chin. “So, you fuck up my apartment because you like me so much?”

“I – I more than like you,” Bernie confesses, surprises herself. “Don’t you get you tired, lonely?” She flops down on her back on Serena’s bed – it’s an exceptionally comfortable bed – and closes her eyes. “God, I’m tired.”

For the first time since she found Bernie in her apartment, Serena is unsure of what to do. She rises to her feet, picks up the gun, holds it close to her chest and then sits down on the edge of the bed. She lies back, so that she and Bernie are side by side.

“You finally found me,” she says.

“I did,” Bernie replies.

“Well done.”

“Thank you,” Bernie chuckles. Serena does too. Bernie laughs more, shrill and wheezing, like a goose. Serena laughs more. She turns to face Bernie. “I like your laugh.” Bernie turns to face her. Serena reaches out a hand and gently brushes Bernie’s hair behind her ear. “And your hair. I’ve dreamt about doing this.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“You need a haircut, through.”

“Are you?”

“No.” Serena turns and pushes the gun underneath the bed. There’s a record player on the table beside her and she lowers the stylus into the groove. “I hate quiet,” she admits. A few sparkling piano notes, then Nina Simone croons ‘baby’.

Serena returns to face Bernie. “I don’t want you to go. Stay a bit?”

“Okay.”

Serena moves closer to Bernie. Bernie’s heart races.

“I – I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Don’t worry,” Serena’s voice is soft. “It’s just a lot of this.” Slowly, she licks at a shiraz-stain along Bernie’s jawline. She draws back, waiting for Bernie to make the next move. Bernie’s eyes flicker down to Serena’s lips.

She leans in.

Cold metal presses against Serena’s stomach. “Oh, goodie,” Serena looks down, “more foreplay, but I really don’t –”

Bernie presses the knife against her harder.

“You can’t,” Serena says.

“I can.”

“You can’t.”

Bernie pushes the knife in. “I can.”

Serena gasps, eyes wide with disbelief. She turns. Hands still around the knife, Bernie climbs atop of her.

“I liked you, too,” Serena’s breath is ragged.

Bernie’s pulls out the knife. “Oh God, fuck, fuck.” What possessed her to pull out the knife? Never pull out the knife. Never pull out the knife. Never stab someone either. Her hands press against Serena’s on Serena’s stomach, trying to stem the blood. Bernie’s fingers turn crimson. “It’s okay, hold on. I’m a doctor. I can fix you.”

“And I’m a bloody saint.” Serena slaps her.

“Let me fix you,” Bernie insists, voice firm, but Serena tries to wriggle from underneath. Bernie handcuffs Serena’s arms above her head.

“You stole my handcuffs?” Serena growls, but her eyes close. Stab wounds fucking hurt. Blood sinks into the mattress of Serena’s bed.

Bernie grits her teeth. “I will fix you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Idk??? I’ve had the exceptionally good Killing Eve song “I had to kill you” stuck in my head and that is not a good song to have stuck in your head when you’ve just started a new job let me tell you.
> 
> I very nearly made Serena a 25 year old, that was the original idea, but we all got a thing for older women, haven’t we?


End file.
